what's for dinner

Thursday, 6 June 2013

Sara's days

Silly question - dinner at 3 pm? That seems kind of weird for Italian standard. Is it normal in Norway? Does she have a snack or a proper meal in the evening? Oh, and one more silly question - what time does she go to sleep usually?

I find it interesting to hear how other people's daily routines are, so inspired by the questions above, I thought I would share how Sara's days typically are.

Sara (19 months old) normally wakes up some time between 06 and 07, after normally having slept through the night. Since Sara is "my job" these days (I'm still on (unpaid) maternity leave until the end of September), I'm the one getting up with her all weekdays. I change her diaper and dress her for the day. I'm still in my PJs when we eat breakfast. We are creatures of habit when it comes to our breakfast menu; fruit yoghurt with rolled oats and a bottle of milk for Sara, plain yoghurt with müsli and honey plus a cup of coffee with milk for me.

Before Sølve leaves for work, I take a quick shower and get dressed. Then it is play time. Either we play indoors, read books, have a dig in the sandbox, meet our friends C and O for playdate, go for a walk with the pram to the city centre to do errands or go to åpen barnehage (playgroup). Ca 11 am is lunch time.

Sara has one nap during daytime, usually around noon. Some days she only sleeps for half an hour, other days she will sleep 1,5 hour - maybe even 2 hours, if I'm lucky. Some days she naps on the go in her pram, other days she naps in her bed.

Some time between 3 and 4 pm she is ready for another meal. My husband Sølve is never home from work before 6 pm, at the earliest, so unfortunately we don't have dinner together as a family during weekdays. Instead Sara and I have early dinner (or second lunch for me) at 3-4 pm. I think most families have dinner at 5-ish.

After dinner it is more play time; most often outside. Sara can be a bit grumpy in the afternoon, and I find it easier to deal with outdoors. Then, at 5:30 pm barn-tv (children's television series) starts. I find it is a nice way for Sara to unwind before bedtime.

At ca 6:30 pm we start the bedtime routine; a bath (every other day), PJs, supper (always porridge), brush teeth, a bottle of milk in the armchair in Sara's bedroom, a few songs and the bed. Normally she falls asleep rather quickly (by 7-7:30 pm), but one of us normally have to be in the room until she falls asleep. Sleep training hasn't worked very well for us, yet.

I would love to hear how your days with your baby/toddler typically are. Anyone want to share? Leave a comment, a link to your own post, or feel free to email me if you want do a guest post about it here on Hei Astrid.

8 comments:

éamonn (3 years old on july 2) wakes up between 6:30-7:30am. brian and i take turns getting up with him during the week. é eats breakfast with brian every morning- cereal with milk, same as daddy. after brian leaves for work, é and i play: if the weather is dry, we walk or ride bikes to the park, work in the garden, or walk to the library. if the weather is very wet, we stay home and read and play with duplo blocks, puzzles, musical instruments, etc.

around 11:30am é eats lunch. he has a bottle at 12:45pm and we read a story and then he goes down for a nap. it can take him anywhere from 10min to 2 hours to fall asleep. if he's not asleep after 2 hours, i get him up and we skip nap. if he does fall asleep, he naps for 2-3 hours. during this break, i eat lunch and clean and take care of whatever household duties i can; these days, this means returning calls regarding the new house and paying bills and making grocery lists.

é wakes up or i wake him up by 5pm. brian is usually home by 5:30pm, and after he gets home i cook dinner. the three of us eat together around 6pm, and then it's time for another bottle for é at 7:30pm. after bottle, we take turns brushing his teeth, giving him a bath, and reading stories in his room. we leave the room by 8:45pm, but it usually takes him an hour or so to fall asleep.

on the days he doesn't take a nap, we skip a bath and he falls asleep around 8pm.

Oh, your day reminds me of mine, Astrid!!S. will be 20 months old next week. He gets up at 6 o´clock (where does he know from that it´s 6???), we have breakfast together (during the week I mostly make his breakfast, on weekends we alternate), Müsli for me and porridge for S. My husband is with us, then goes to the bathroom. When he has left at 7.30 h, S. and I go to the bathroom, which means a quick shower for him and after that book-reading on the toilet-seat for him (if I`m lucky) and a quick shower for me, too.After that we play together, then we go out for buying things for lunch etc. Once a week we meet a friend of mine who also has a toddler.Two days a week I go working, so S. goes to my parents who live 15 kms away from our town. I bring him there on Wednesday as I start working later. On Fridays my husband brings him there.We have lunch at about 11.30 h, then S. is napping for about 1,5 - 2 hours. After that, it is playtime again, either with friends (thats what I prefer) or outside on the playground or in the garden. I hate rainy days! I always try to go out on rainy days too, because a day can be very long otherwise....When I go working, I pick up S. after lunch, or, once a week, at 5 o´clock.In the evening, S. has dinner at about 6.30 pm, and we do some more quite games for slowing down a bit. He goes to bed at 7.30 and also needs a person in his room and he loves songs.... Normally he sleeps all night, but the last weeks have been a bit more 'busy' - he doesn´t stop teething.

Thank you for sharing your days, I´m always very interested in Sarah, because she was born 2 weeks after my son.

Okay, here we go. My daughter is 11 months now and her wake up time alternates between 6 and 8 am. I still breastfeed - weaning the baby has become an issue - so that´s her first breakfast. As I am on maternity leave, I´ll get up with her, change her diaper and dress her. Before her daddy is off for work, I´ll take a shower and dress (can´t take her in the bathroom with me anymore since she discovered the delight of pulling herself to stand and tear down the shower curtain i.e....).Then I have a coffee and M has a proper breakfast - a fine warm porridge with milk and fruit puree.After breakfast it´s playtime or we attend a playgroup or I take her with me in the Ergo carrier or the pram while running errands. Between 10 and 11 am she has another short breastfeed and a short nap. Usually a daytime nap doesn´t last longer than 30 minutes.After her nap it´s playtime again and soon time for lunch - a mash of vegetables and meat/fish. She might take another nap around 2 or 3 pm.Playtime again, if possible we have a playdate or I go for walk with a friend while she´s in the Ergo/pram. Depends on the weather.Daddy comes home around 6 or 7 pm, usually the little one has dinner (alternating between another mashed vegetable dish or porridge) around 7 or 7.30 pm. One of us feed her while the other parent has dinner, too. She´s off to bed around 8 pm. Usually she signals she´s tired by then. Every other day she has a bath after dinner. Going to sleep means another breastfeed. Mostly she falls asleep right after that, but we´re getting better at disconnecting breastfeeding = sleeping.During the day she also has two little snacks like some banana or yoghurt or other fruit. Provided in a way she can manage with only 2 teeth so far.We just recently started visiting the playground as the weather has been awful for a long time over here but she really loves it.In her world playtime means a lot of re-organising our books, DVDs, CDs and of course, exercising this new "I can stand on my own feed" thing. Most household items are more interesting than her actual toys. Reading books still means eating books...Since she started to crawl properly rather late, she´s been pretty frustrated quite some time. But since her last growth spurt I have to say I love this age, she´s so cute and so much fun and pretty tough. Since I stopped breastfeeding during the night, she sleeps far better. She might wake up once but falls asleep again easily with Daddy by her side.

That´s the way we roll during the week... Doing household chores is rather diffcult when she´s awake, and when she´s napping, I obviously don´t start hoovering.I use to go to bed around 11 pm, still surprised by how exhausting a day with a baby/toddler can be. There are those days I hit the pillow at 9 pm, though...

Thanks for sharing your and Sara´s day, Astrid, and thanks for your road trip/solo flight advice some months ago. We had our first flights (and flights without daddy, that is) last week and she did so so well!

My son A is now 14 months old and here is our daily/weekly routine (or at least just about ;-)):

A usually wakes up sometime between 0615-0715, and during the weekdays my husbond and I alternate getting up with him. We both work full-time since our son A turned 1 year.The one of us getting up early with him goes to A's bedroom, pulls him out of bed, and then goes to the bathroom with him to change his diaper, put clothes on him etc etc. After at about half an hour the other one (who has napped for half-an-hour more or so) gets dressed and "take over" A; that means preparing and having breakfast with him wile the other "early-parent" goes off to work.After finishing breakfast together (A: bread with jam/banana/fish/brown cheese etc, grown-up: cottage cheese/yoghurt with nuts) we get ready for nanny/dagmamma. Since A turned 1 year we share a nanny with another family in our area, who also have a son about A's age. Every other week the nanny and the boys stay at our flat, the other week they stay at the other family's flat (a perfect arrangement for our two families- the boys are now best friends :-))So every other week we walk to the other family's flat, and the "opposite week" we just wait for the nanny to arrive at our door :-)

With the nanny the two boys often go to "åpen barnehage" in the neigbourhood, or they go for a long walk in the stroller/stay inside to play -if wet weather.

A stays with the nanny from approx 8 o clock to 16 o clock in the afternoon.The one of us who went off to work early that day picks him up/arrives home first and starts to prepare dinner. A couple of afternoons a week either one of us grownups get home late after having gone to the gym directly after work.One or both of us always eat dinner with A, at approx 18 o clock. We try to make meals that A will also be able to enjoy most days. Some days he eats separate food-jars from the grocery store (baby food).

After dinner (at approx 18.30-18.45) we get him cleaned up (he is for the time being a VERY messy eater..;-)) and ready for bed (wash him, brush his teeth, vitamin-drops).When clean and in his pyjama and his "sleeping bag for baby", one of us reads a couple of books with him in the "big cozy chair" in his beedrom. After reading (at approx. 1900) we sing his good-night tune a couple of times whilst putting him in his crib/sprinkelseng.We also stay with him in his room until he falls asleep. Some days it just takes 5 minutes for him to fall asleep, other days up until 25-30 minutes.

Thank you so much for your excellent blog, Astrid! You always make me miss my home town Bergen so much :-)

Wow! I am so glad that my question inspired this post - very nice and very very interesting to know about other people's daily life and routine.

This is Lucia's (20 mo / old) day:

We wake up at about 7.30 while she still sleeps. Get showered, shaved & make breakfast. At 8 she usually wakes up and we get her changed & dressed. Breakfast for her is usually a bottle of milk and a cup of wholewheat cereal that she happily nibbles while playing or reading books on the carpet.Then the day begins, like that:MON - TUE Lucia stays with my mom, either in our apartment or in my mom's. They go to the playground, do some shopping, play, nap and read books. I usually pick her up at 7 PM.WED - FRI It's kindergarten days. Lucia stays there from 9 am until 4.30 pm, when my mom picks her up. Then they spend the rest of the afternoon together until I pick her up at my mom's at 7 pm. If my mom's not available, Lucia will spend her day at the kindergarten until 6.30 PM.Kindegartens have some awesome routines and games, and Lucia has lots of fun there. They have a small private playground and, if the weather is good, they organize picnics and small trips to the parc, the beach or the lake. After a whole day at the kindergarten, Lucia, is happily tired.During the day, Lucia has lunch at around noon. Usually she has pasta (she is a pasta fanatic) or a portion of meat, with lots of vegetables and fresh fruit (she loves pears, blueberries, mango, pineapple).In the afternoon, at around 3.30-4 PM, she has a snack, which is a yogurt with fruit and a couple of biscuits.After I pick her up, we drive home and we cook dinner.Dinner is serve at around 8 PM when my husband is back from work. Since Lucia is always hungry when we arrive home, she has an early appetizer with some bread or a breadstick. She has a small cooking set with a couple of pots, a lid, a wooden spoon and some toy foods made of plastic or fabric, and she sits in the kitchen cooking her own imaginary meal as I cook dinner.We have dinner together, at 8 PM, and it' usually pasta or rice with vegetables or pulses and cheese (we don't eat much meat), followed by some more fresh fruit.Then she brushes her teeth, wears her pijamas, and watches cartoons on her daddy's Ipad until 9 PM, when it's bedtime.Lucia falls asleep on her own, sucking her pacifier and cuddling her cuddle-blanket, and she loves her Winnie the Pooh carillon that gently makes her fall asleep.